Hello i want to buy 22 inch machete from tramontina and have choice between wooden and plastic handle and the handle material itself does not concern me because I probably will change it someday anyway(or if its plastic right after the purchase), but I'm curious about blade and tang itself on pictures the machhetes look like they differ in the way they are build / i want to buy the one with better handle to blade connection so it's less likely to break there
So the question is does anyone have or had 2 of them and can tell me it the metal parts are the same in terms of construction and if not do any of them is better?
Thanks in advance for all the answers
by HxH-fan
3 Comments
I have the wood one, the tang is all the way through to just a couple millimeters of the end of the handle, you can see it down the back of the handle, it’s open. I had an older one about a decade ago of the same make with a worse tang. So might be machete to machete. But my advice is definitely the wood one, the wood carves pretty well, cut some grooves into the old one for grip.
I have the 12 and 18 inch with wooden handles. The tang doesn’t show on the finger grip side of the handle. On the pommel it’s about half way. Bolted and glued together with 3 pins. I have used mine a lot and they are plenty strong. They can really take a beating. In short, the tang goes all the way to the end, but fills about half the handle. I would go with the wood over plastic if I were you.
I got the wooden handled one and made it a bit more comfortable on my belt sander. Mainly just removed the part of wood sticking up past the metal tang. I also removed the coating and gave it a vinegar patina and convexed the grind leaving the tip dull as it will most likely come in contact with foreign objects. $25 and 2 hours of tuning and at this point it’s my favorite chopping tool.